Free Science Peer Review From Cultish Conspiracy

Free Science Peer Review From Cultish
Conspiracy

While the hacked emails episode
several months ago revealing attempts by scientists to
withhold information about global warming from publication
has put the matter of peer review under scrutiny like never before, secrecy in peer
review continues to be upheld by the science establishment
as a good thing rather than seen for what it is – a brake on
the flow of ideas, a reminder that rogue scientists face
rejection by powerful forces, ostracism and other
tortures.

Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini
report colleagues attempted to silence them from publishing
in their new bookthat Darwin's claim was
wrong about natural selection. Some of these dark forces
afflicting Fodor were brought to light in a chapter in my
own book The Altenberg 16: An Expose of the
Evolution Industry.

So why not just thrash these
ideas out in the open as in other professional fields and
properly pay scientists to write reviews instead of sending
the journal money off to Wiley? Maybe then science referees
(reviewers) would take time from their academic
responsibilities to actually read papers submitted –
particularly those from the unaffiliated.

In my previous
story on peer review, I posed the question of
whether a science peer review system based on secret
submission policies benefits the American public who fund
science (it does not), and I included correspondence between
the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
and the authors of several papers submitted months ago
for publication by National Academy of Sciencesmember Lynn Margulis. One of those papers still awaits
publication and Margulis, who says she "only wants to see
that real science, open to those who want to participate, is
well done, discussed critically without secrecy and properly
communicated" is now prepared to bring the PNAS
editorial board before the NAS advocacy committee over the
case, if necessary.

I was curious how journal reviewers
are paid and so I called PNAS managing editor Daniel
Salsbury the other day to ask him. Salsbury told me that
neither the editorial board nor any of the anonymous
reviewers of PNAS – the most prestigious science
journal in the world – is paid. It's "all voluntary",
said Salsbury.

What then is the incentive? Why do these
extremely busy scientists work as slaves?

Wiley
Evolution and Development journal editor Rudy Raff
told me scientists see it as "traditional community
service." Raff says each of his editors gets an allowance
for an editorial assistant but the editor does not get paid
nor do the anonymous referees. And Raff thinks the anonymity
does work. "It allows reviewers to speak frankly", he said,
"many scientists feel if someone is paid, there may be a
question of bias."

Massimo Pigliucci, an editor of the
fairly new open-access journal Philosophy and Theory in
Biology – whose board members include half a dozen of
the Altenberg 16 scientists (esteemed cell biologist Stuart
Newman is not among them) – once termed the idea of a paid
review "bribery".

But could such journal board positions
simply be fast-tracks to publication of an editor’s or an
editorial board member’s own work and a tool for access to
grant money?

Raff indeed told me that "marks you look for
in a scientist" are whether they have served on boards. But
not too many, he said. As in the corporate world, that would
be a negative indicator.

James MacAllister, a 61-year old
graduate student in the Margulis lab at the University of
Massachusetts-Amherst, went further. MacAllister said
"there's certain politics and gaming of the system that goes
on at the journals".

MacAllister thinks editors and
editorial reviewers are partial to publishing not only their
colleagues but scientists whose papers cite familiar names
-- including those of the editors and editorial reviewers.
Greater visibility of a scientist's work leads to notice by
potential funders.

Open-access scientific publishing,
however, is proving useful to a degree in leveling the
playing field so that independent scientists have a shot at
being published and cited. But independent scientists still
face the problem of editors not having the
cross-disciplinary knowledge necessary to properly assess
unique papers, i.e., the biologists may not know
enough physics, for example.

Gregory O’Kelly, an
independent investigator of electrochemical therapy in
treating debilitation following nervous injury and reversing
the degeneration of aging, submitted one of his papers
titled "The terrestrial evolution of metabolism and life -
by the numbers" to the open-access journal Theoretical
Biology and Medical Modeling. After facing numerous
journal rejections, his paper finally drew the attention of
TBioMed editor Paul Agutter and the paper was
published, resulting in 1,400 viewers.

But when O’Kelly
attempted to publish a second paper on the subject in
TBioMed that was more cross-disciplinary involving
serious math, the philosophy of science and the history of
electrophysiology – the journal told him it was difficult
to find reviewers for the paper. So O’Kelly approached
other journals.

O’Kelly wrote to me following my story
about Margulis and PNAS saying:

"I
have submitted the paper to a number of philosophy of
science journals, none of which, yet, would accept it for
review. The list includes three journals, but is not limited
to that. These three are Biology and Philosophy,
University of Chicago Journal of the Philosophy of
Science, and Philosophy and Theory in Biology.
The paper has numerous references to papers published
already in the first two journals. The paper’s content
reveals that the authors of the referenced papers do not
understand physics, nor do they understand the details and
historical background of the original work that they now
celebrate as biophysics. The editorial screens for these
journals took up to a week to send me a rejection notice, on
rather flimsy grounds. They are dedicated, it seems, to the
perpetuation of the stasis of careerism that lies like a
shroud on the field of academic
publishing.

But the most insulting rejection
came from Philosophy and Theory in Biology, a
relatively new publication (started in August) whose senior
editor is none other than Massimo Pigliucci. It took his
team of editors only 36 hours to reject the paper on the
grounds that it was not appropriate. The science and math in
the paper, unless examined by specialists in the field,
could not possibly have been understood by the editors in
that amount of time. . . . I don’t think Massimo ever saw
the paper, trusting instead to his editorial scriveners to
do their duty. In an embarrassing rant, presented in two
emails, I raged that not only was his journal the most
appropriate one, given its stated objectives, but also his
editorial linemen were stultifying in their ignorance not
just of current trends in the biosciences, but of the
philosophy of science and the physical sciences. . . .
[D]espite his posturing as a man of science and a skeptic,
[he] is an obstacle to scientific progress although chief
editor of a journal alleged to advance that very thing."

Floyd Rudmin, a psychology professor at the University of
Tromso in Arctic Norway and member of the US organization,
Psychologists for Social Responsibility also emailed me
following the Margulis - PNAS story telling me about
the obstacles to publishing his paper on how minorities
adjust to a new culture – "acculturation". Rudmin says
there’s been a paradigm running since the 1960s on this
that "violates all of the standards of psychological
research".

Rudmin says his paper addressing acculturation
eventually won an American Psychological Association
research prize and his department’s annual reseach prize,
but that the paper could not pass peer review. He
published it in an anthropology journal.

The paper is
linked near the top on Google, he said, which pleases him
(although many take issue with the fairness of the search
engines, including this journalist. Also see John Landon’s
book: World History and the Eonic Effect regarding
search engine interference.).

Wrote
Rudmin:

"One journal, Applied
Psychology: An International Review, took one
year to get 2 reviews (not the stipulated 3 reviews in 3
months), done by the very scholars [who] I told the editor
in advance will oppose because I am exposing their own
errors. My complaints to Blackwell’s CEO about this
instigated Blackwell to create some editorial guidelines.
But Blackwell said that they cannot intervene in any way in
editorial decisions about content.

The problem is
ubiquitous, and there is no avenue of appeal. Norway made a
science ethics board, but they refuse to consider matters of
unethical publication practices. Blackwell’s CEO told me
that my only avenue of appeal is to the officers of the
science associations who chose the journal editor. Scan.
J.Psychol. is jointly run by the national
psychology association of the 5 Nordic nations. I wrote to
the officers of all 5 of them concerning this, and not one
person replied."

Also emailing in response to
the Margulis piece was Morad Abou-Sabe, former President &
Assistant Chancellor, Misr University for Science &
Technology, Cairo and Emeritus Professor, Department of Cell
Biology & Neuroscience, Rutgers:

"I guess I
am not surprised about the review process, it has always
been a privileged club that controlled both ends of the
research process, grant funding and publications. I remember
that at times I had to go to my congressman for help, but it
did not matter. It is the "Old Boys Network", as it is
called."

Constructal Theorist Adrian Bejan
of Duke University says essentially what the individual
investigator is up against is the "academic mafia" and notes
the following in International Journal of Design & Nature
and Ecodynamics:

"Loaded with bias is the
review process reserved for the big projects. The review is
run by the "leaders," the persons who head (or have headed)
the big projects. They are the influential, the ones who are
consulted during the review process and even before a new
research initiative is selected for funding by the
government. They are many, not one. They constitute a social
stratum known colloquially as academic mafias and dark
networks (in social dynamics, these terms mean "networks of
persons exerting hidden influence"). Favored are the
applicants who work for the mafia."

Isn’t
it time to stop kissing the
ring?

*************

Suzan Mazur
is the author of Altenberg 16: An Exposé of the
Evolution Industry. Her interest in
evolution began with a flight from Nairobi into Olduvai
Gorge to interview the late paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey.
Because of ideological struggles, the Kenyan-Tanzanian
border was closed, and Leakey was the only reason
authorities in Dar es Salaam agreed to give landing
clearance. The meeting followed discovery by Leakey and her
team of the 3.6 million-year-old hominid footprints at
Laetoli. Suzan Mazur's reports have since appeared in the
Financial Times, The Economist, Forbes, Newsday,
Philadelphia Inquirer, Archaeology, Connoisseur, Omni and
others, as well as on PBS, CBC and MBC. She has been a guest
on McLaughlin, Charlie Rose and various Fox Television News
programs. Email: sznmzr @
aol.com

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